This game was way ahead of its time. Look at it. It's Freaking ZELDA on the Atari 2600!!!!!!!! Really, in both games you have an overhead perspective on a big "world" that scrolls around. You have to find phone pieces, just like the TriForce pieces. Theres even a Title screen and short ending!!!!!! I don't think this game gets enough credit.

There were three main problems. The biggest,Ithink,was that in 1982 people wanted PAC MAN and DONKEY KONG games, not adventures. Second, there aren't enough characters......Just ET, Elliot, The FBI agents and a scientist. The third and biggest problem is the stupid PITS of course. If HSW had made these CAVES or BUILDINGS that you could easily walk into and out of, I think the game would be an A. But the pits almost ruin it.....they all look the same and its hard as hell to get OUT of them without falling back in, over and over. I think that with more time Howard would have realized this and remedied it.

The graphics really aren't that bad, although it has very little to do with the ET film. But it still is the MISSING LINK between Adventure and Zelda. Give this game a breakout already!

The Mad Blogger is going to take the middle ground here. While he does not believe this to be the worst game made for the Atari 2600, it is far from being a quality game. When you compare this to Howard Warshaw's other efforts such as Raiders of the Lost Ark or Yar's Revenge, E.T. pales in comparison.

I would rate this game as a C. It's worth playing, merely to see what all the negative press is about. However, after a few plays, you, too, will be looking to jump into the nearest pit.

HSW's idea for making this game is better than what Atari executives and even Spielberg himself thought the game should be. They thought it would be more like Pac-Man. Some people these days I think trash the game because it's an Atari game and listen to others without even actually playing the game.

People in December 1982 were expecting the game to be like the movie in quality. The game came out when the movie was still making number 1 weekends at the box office, which keep in mind was six months after release. That's really lofty and unrealistic expectations people were having.

Some people also don't realize that it wasn't just ET cartridges that were buried and crushed. Atari also made bad business decisions by making a ton of copies thinking that it would be a surefire hit because of the name of a film that was about to take over Star Wars. Atari also did the same thing for Pac-Man, but for that game, they were able to get away with making it a pack-in game along with Combat.

I do agree with the review because this really isn't that bad of a game. It's got its fair share of problems (the pits), but it's definitely playable and if anything, it's better than garbage like Sssnake or Karate, which are far worse Atari games.